A greener economy must achieve a balance between social provision and
safeguarding the environment. This can be done most effectively by humanscale communities where the give and take required can be brokered face to
face. The winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences 2009,
Elinor Ostrom (2009), champions this approach in her work on economic
governance, particularly with regard to the commons. This logic leads to the
principle of subsidiarity, in which the control of human affairs ought to be
handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. This
principle is contained in many constitutions around the world, including the
United States Constitution1 and in the founding treaty of the EU. Article 5 of
the preamble to the Treaty on European Union (EU 2008a) states that ‘decisions
are taken as closely as possible to the citizen in accordance with the principle
of subsidiarity’.